


The Peaceful Waters

by plumedy



Category: Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: (like stress baking but with guns), Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e04 The White Knight Stratagem, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Stress Shooting, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 05:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9057961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/pseuds/plumedy
Summary: Drive these memories from your mind. Forget me, he didn't say. Get out until it's too late; forget this work and this friendship.Bell, Doyle, and dealing with the aftermath of The White Knight Stratagem.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrsHorowietzky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsHorowietzky/gifts).



> Written as a Christmas gift for my brilliant friend :3 Merry Christmas, dear.
> 
> Also, you know where the title comes from? It's a song from an album called "I'm A Writer, Not a Fighter". This was too perfect. I couldn't resist.

I had, of course, a suspicion that he would try to avoid me. But I had no idea that he would be so devilishly _good_ at it. The Doctor was a busy man, but around me the number of his urgent and unforeseen commitments seemed to rise tenfold.

"Dr Bell has just left here," I'd heard on one memorable occasion upon enquiring as to his whereabouts.

"I might've known the old man has the power of premonition as well as that of concealment," I muttered crossly as a way of response and left, leaving the lady in utter bewilderment.

It was finally becoming intolerable. I had to counteract him – to defeat him in his own domain, as it were. And I thought that I knew just the trick; the one place from which he'd never let himself be chased. The Edinburgh Medical School.

And so I donned my least conspicuous attire and showed up in his lecture hall precisely five minutes before an osteology lecture. I'd like to see him weasel out of this one, I thought. Not a chance!

It was a queer feeling – sitting on that bench among all those unfamiliar youngsters so many years later. Many things had changed around here. Women were now being freely admitted; the administration had made some feeble attempts at renovation, and the walls had changed colour from dirty grey to dubious beige. Different medicines and chemicals were being used; and so even the smell was different.

Only one thing hadn't changed at all: the Doctor. I saw him stroll in through the door, his back straight and his step quick as ever, his cane clicking loudly against the sunlit floor. Even his fashion was somewhat outdated; still he insisted on wearing a double-breasted frock with cuffs and under that, a white waistcoat. He seemed to have clean forgotten that the last decade had happened.

For a moment my breath caught in my throat. This was uncannily like my first day.

I rose and intercepted him just before he began ascending the stage by grabbing the left sleeve of his starched shirt. I'd timed my move perfectly; he'd have neither the time to argue with me nor the inclination to risk making a scene.

He turned towards me, expecting, of course, to have to scold an overly audacious student. I could bet _I_ was not the student he'd had in mind.

I had never before in my life seen such a drastic change come over a man's face.

I could see the knuckles of his hand gripping the cane go white. We were both terribly conscious of a hall of curious second-years looking at him expectantly.

"You will stay afterwards," I said in a very low voice, "and you will talk to me, Doctor. I expect I have earned that, at least."

"Yes," said he, briefly closing his eyes. "Very well. You may wait."

He was as brilliant as ever as he mounted the stage and proceeded with his description of the bones of the lower limb. Indeed, if I hadn't known him so well, I would not have noticed how deliberately he looked away from me – to the exclusion of the students sitting on my bench. As ever, the Doctor was experiencing emotional turmoil and thought that the best cure to this inconvenience was to avoid it. I sighed. I felt at once exasperated, sad, and terribly fond of him.

He stormed off after the lecture, but, as he'd promised, he'd only gone to his room. There I found him, standing motionlessly between the shelves.

"What do you think you're doing, Doctor?" I asked bluntly, closing the door behind me. "I would've thought I might at least deserve an explanation."

"I have given you one," he said evenly without raising his head to look at me. "We both know what I do is not for you. Keep away from that room."

Only now did I notice that he'd deliberately positioned himself between me and the door leading to his "black museum". The door was locked tight, the way it had been the day I first came to him. He looked a challenge at me. I felt a sharp sting in my chest.

"All right," said I pacifically, "I am not to approach the room. May I approach you, at any rate?"

He looked hesitant for a moment before nodding and turning away. I slowly walked towards him; he, meanwhile, put his cane down, sat on the bench, and whipped out his revolver. He was training it on what looked like a thick wooden plank nailed to the far wall. I could almost laugh.

"Shooting in confined spaces is a bad habit, you know," I said. "The smoke is going to be intolerable."

 _Bang_. He'd hit his target precisely.

"Another experiment?" asked I.

"Just a small case," said he. _Bang_.

"Doctor," I said very gently, "I don't think you quite understand."

He paused.

"I think I understand only too well," responded he drily. "I am not blind. How do you think it felt watching our work torment you?" _Bang, bang._ "To see you during the Heather Grace case and be unable to tell you anything? To watch you fall apart during the Rhodes case and be powerless to help?" _Bang, bang, bang_.

He turned to me, and with a start I saw that his eyes glistened with grief and anger.

"Have you come for more of that, Dr Doyle?"

That was a blow.

"I might well be offended by such an address," remarked I quietly.

"All the better," snapped he, standing up and waving away the acrid smoke. "Then you may see sense."

"From your previous experiences with me, Doctor, do you think it is likely that the sense I’ll see is going to be the same as yours?"

"No," he admitted after a pause.

"That's quite right," I said, not without some anger of my own, "and you may _not_ call me 'Dr Doyle"."

He made a sharp step towards me.

"And you," he parried, "may not perpetually address me by my formal title!"

That gave me pause. He turned, twirling a pair of pincers, and went to the wall to retrieve the bullets. I suspected there must've been a sheet of steel somewhere within the plank, for coming into contact with it had clearly done them no good. They looked less like spheres and more like someone's iron vertebrae now, with bizarre notches and sharp projections.

I noticed at that point that there was a whole table worth of the stuff between me and him – God only knows what his "small case" was about, but he had sure wasted a lot of metal on it.

He surveyed the newest additions to his collection closely and chucked them in with the rest. I watched him silently.

"My dear Bell," I said at last, and was rewarded by some of the tension visibly draining from his posture. "I am no knight. I have not come here to fight anyone," I allowed myself a weak smile, "and least of all you.

"Friendship and cordiality, remember? Or do you not want my friendship?"

Pale and serious, he raised his eyes at me.

"Of course," he said very quietly, "I do."

And he leaned over that heap of mangled and deformed metal, took me gently by the temples, and pressed a kiss to my forehead. His lips felt cold like winter, and yet I could feel his fingers tremble.

"Arthur," he said. I was overwhelmed. "I know you can see many things now. Look at me. What do you see?"

"Love." My voice cracked. "And fear."

He nodded acquiescence, his face half-concealed by the gloom.

"Then perhaps," I said after a few moments of suffocating silence, "perhaps it is you who needs to remember that there are more things under the sun than your work."

I stretched out both of my hands expectantly. Bell looked at me, smiled feebly, and handed me his smoking revolver. From the pocket of his waistcoat he fished out the two last bullets and dropped them into my palm with a flat _clunk_. In his expression I glimpsed something I had never expected to see – a glimmer of hope and, more than that, trust.

We walked out of the University into the wintry cool of the late-afternoon Edinburgh. The Union Canal had not yet frozen over, and I threw Bell's bullets into it. They sunk without a sound.

He whipped out his watch and looked at it with a kind of exaggerated concentration. I do admit I tensed a little.

"What," I said, "do you have another one of those urgent and unforeseen appointments you've somehow got an influx of?"

"Yes," said he with a deadpan expression. "With you. I have urgently and unforeseeably decided to invite you for dinner."


End file.
